


Legends: From Whence We Came

by Eisen



Series: Legends [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, Spoilers, Summary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-06-07 13:51:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6807631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisen/pseuds/Eisen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short summary intended for those reading my <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/3811525/chapters/8494033">Legends: Of the Sky</a> crossover, who are unfamiliar with (either) Mass Effect and/or Dragon Age.</p><p>(this is an extremely broad summary and not many 'player choices' are actually touched upon, but still, beware of spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Shepard

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by Death7559 and Kyannah, who made me realise I should have thought of this before.
> 
> Edited by the lovely [coffeeguru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/coffeeguru/). If you are partial to Dragon Age fics, read her stuff! (even if you aren't, you still should. Iz that gud)

It is the 22nd century and the entire galaxy is at war. A mere year before it had not been so.

Humanity had first ascended to the stars after discovering the ruins of an ancient civilization on Mars - the Protheans. They used what they learned to make their first forays into the unknown beyond the Sol system. First contact with another species - the Turians - was violent, but peace was established when the Citadel Council stepped in, and Earth soon joined the other worlds in an intergalactic autocracy steered by the most prominent races: the Asari, the Salarians and the Turians.

Humanity, ever impatient and striving, worked to earn themselves a place on the Council, and eventually succeeded. A key figure in this accomplishment was the first human Spectre, Commander Eris Shepard, whose tenure as Special Tactics and Reconnaissance agent was fraught with difficulty and controversy.

The Commander first gained the position after her intended mentor, Spectre Nihlus Kryik, was killed in action while they were investigating an attack on a human colony involving a Prothean artifact. The suspected orchestrator of these events was Spectre Saren Arterius, who, it was eventually discovered, was under the influence of a millennia old sentient machine known as Sovereign, a Reaper.

Spectre Shepard used the influence that humanity gained in the battle against Sovereign to obtain  a seat on the Council for humanity. She was then sent on a routine patrol to hunt down any remaining followers of Sovereign - a mission that ended in the destruction of the Commander’s ship and her subsequent death.

Two years later the Commander appears, fully reconstructed by the pro-human terrorist group Cerberus. Her warnings of the Reaper invasion have fallen on deaf ears and little has been done in her absence to prepare for their arrival. She moves to try and prevent abductions of entire human colonies on the fringes of civilised space, abductions perpetrated by the Collectors, who Shepard believes to be agents of the Reapers.

Shepard succeeds in destroying the Collector base, located at the core of the galaxy, but in doing so destroys a Mass Relay in order to halt the Reaper advance, causing the death of over 300,000 Batarians.

Her subsequent incarceration is cut short when the Reapers finally arrive and invade Earth. Shepard then sets out to unite the galaxy in an effort to ally all the races, so that they may fight back against the impossible foe.

Their hope falls on a device, one which had its blueprints unearthed in the archives on Mars, a device that is now orbiting over the Earth as the battle rages around it, waiting for Shepard’s final decision.


	2. The Champion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summary of Dragon Age 2 events for my LotS readers (primarily those Mass Effect fans that do not know Dragon Age)

Thedas is old. This world of magic and intrigue has gone through millennia of change, with civilizations rising and falling through the ages, only to have their twilight be the dawn for new powers.

The oldest records are of the Elvhen, a once great people that spanned the worlds, with ruins of their temples and cities dotting all countries. It is said their people were skilled in magic and lived lives that knew no end.

But then the humans came. Rising out of the ashes of Arlathan was the Tevinter Imperium. A kingdom ruled by mages that subverted all the known world until the cataclysmic event that caused the Blight weakened the Imperium enough for a religious revolution to free more than half the world from their grasp.

The year is 9:36 Dragon, nine ages and thirty-six years after the end of the Imperium of old. It has been five years since the Fifth Blight, a flood of murderous creatures known as darkspawn led by a corrupted dragon, was stopped in Ferelden by a small band of Grey Wardens and their allies.

Kirkwall, a city-state in the Free Marches, and a haven to many refugees during the Blight, is reaching a boiling point of civil unrest. A company of Qunari, led by the Arishok, one of their ruling triumvirate, has been stranded in the city for nearly half a decade. Tensions between the giant horned men and the city’s populace are growing high, with affiliates of the Chantry riling up mobs in religious fervor, while the Qunari grow ever more frustrated with the lack of order in the society around them.

Sorana Hawke, once a Ferelden refugee, now a member of the social elite after a series of dramatic circumstances in the Deep Roads, has found herself as a mediator between the parties. Little does the world at large know that Sorana has a secret of her own. She is a mage...something neither party would tolerate.

Meanwhile, the Templars watching over Kirkwall’s Circle of Magi are growing stricter, leading to increased pushback from the Mages. Templar atrocities and blood magic run rampant, while the populace is caught in the middle.

The Veil - a barrier that holds the spiritual dream-realm of the Fade and its denizens at bay- grows thinner and thinner with every life ended and demon summoned, allowing for the city’s grasp of reality to slip further and further away. 


End file.
